MLB has a great commercial about playing baseball with anything you can get your hands on for gear: folding chairs, milk crates, phone poles for bases, a stick and a ball for the essentials.
But that has nothing on Step Ball.
For one thing, you need at least six people to play streetball--teams of three: Pitcher, fielder, and someone to catch--or else you'll be chasing that ball a long way every time someone whiffs.
Where I grew up, we had a shortage of little kids our age. By the time I was eight, it was clear we existed in the neighborhood as tweeners, as in, "tween the last crop of kids and the next one." There were a bunch of big kids--16, 17, 19 year olds--and a pile of infants--3 months, 1 year, like that--on our block.
And then there was us.
Me, my brother, and Chuck and Jeff.
Four, maybe five years separated us in total. So it was natural we hung around together a lot, like it or not. Once we were allowed outside.
Summertime on a block of row homes, when you can't cross the street, can be brutal.
It was brutal when you could cross the street, for that matter. We couldn't ride our bikes too far away, and the neighbors really threw a fit when you played football across their lawns.
So some time back in the mists of the early 1970's, we invented Step Ball.
You could play it with just two people. Four worked, too.
All you needed was an open space in front of our front steps, and a cooperative neighbor to not park their car directly across the street from those same steps.
That, and a tennis ball.
An older one, preferably. New ones, fresh out of the can, had too much fuzz on them.
What you did was stand on the sidewalk, in front of the steps.
And threw that ball as hard as you could.
Our steps were perfect for this. Four concrete slabs, eight-inch risers, 12-inch treads. And a rounded corner where the tread met the riser.
We didn't know any of those words, of course.
All we knew was that rounded edge was the sweet spot, and if you hit it, that ball was going to soar clear across the street onto the neighbor's front porch.
That being a home run, naturally.
A single was anywhere across the front half of the street. Doubles, the back half. Triples, up on the opposite sidewalk.
Fielder had free run of the entire area--including the home run area, if he could get up the neighbor's lawnslope to the front of the porch area before the ball came back down.
Which was never.
Foul balls skipped off the front curb of the sidewalk, where you stood to throw in the first place.
The sweet spot had an evil twin, right next to it. Because if you missed that sweet spot, the ball would carom forward, up the steps and into your own lawns, bushes and--god help you if you did this--the roof of the front porch.
The annual rite of Retrieval of Roofed Tennis Balls occurred in September, when Dad would climb onto the porch roof from out the bedroom window and toss them all down.
I remember one particularly rough season when between three of us we managed to roof seven tennis balls.
Before July 4th.
Dad proved himself to be very cool that year.
Two RoRTB's.
One in July, and one in September.
The September one brought back eight tennis balls.
Just could not find that sweet spot.
